First Hike

Not really a rugged hike, but at least a nice walk in the woods (think Bill Bryson, but with his whole fam!)

Noah needed a little snack along the way... Lily was very excited to see the waterfalls, and a deer that we spotted along the way!

My parents, along with J. and Lily, posing in front of the falls (Noah and I took the photo).
Great Falls
Lily taking a break, courtesy of her daddy
Me, Noah and my mom and dad

Playtime

I keep expecting Lily to get tired of Noah, but when I set up his playmat for the first time - she stayed with him the entire time, and made sure to tell him the names of all the animals!!

Hangin' with Grandma

Daddy's Boy

Who does Noah remind you of??

Little Man

Wide awake
Hanging out with his big sis...
Seriously, how cute is he?!

Recent photos

Sweet baby asleep...
Raising his eyebrow... "You're suspect, Mom."

Mama's Boy

Jeremy walked in the door and accused me of making Noah a metrosexual... but his fingernails were so long! I am afraid to cut them when he's this young, and I didn't have any baby-sized files, so I figured my emery board would do the trick.

Go Cubs!

Sweet Baby Noah

We are having such a great time with Noah. He is such a calm, peaceful baby... perhaps he's just happy to have time to relax and rest after all the poking and prodding of his first two weeks. He smiles like this constantly while he sleeps.

Our First Outing

Noah took it easy on us his first night at home... went to bed around 9:30 pm, woke up around 1 am for a quick feed and then slept until almost 5. We were pleasantly surprised to not be exhausted after bringing him home.

Still - we were in need of some breakfast and Lily demanded that we bring Noah to see Mimi at Sidamo, our neighborhood coffee shop. So we gave the stroller a test run - check out the hitchhiker board for Lily on the back. She loves that she can "push" her baby brother in his stroller.

Homecoming!!

That's right... Noah officially came home around 6pm yesterday.

We were very excited to show up at the hospital yesterday morning and find him tucked away in a "normal" bed. As you can see, the Georgetown NICU made a lot of effort to personalize his space, including a blanket from home and a photo of his big sister. Tucked into his carseat and ready to go...
Daddy got a shot of Noah, Lily and I as we headed inside.
It looks like he's falling here, but I promise he was resting comfortably on a pillow while his proud big sister held him for the first time.
Snuggling with Daddy

Homecoming??

Man, I really don't want to jinx it, but... we are so excited that the doctors have indicated that Noah will likely come home tomorrow!

It has been a rough couple of days. In fact, J. and I are hoping that this past Saturday was the scariest day we will ever have in our lives. We got a call from Noah's doctor at about 1 am. They suspected he had a viral infection and told us to come in right away. While Jeremy jumped out of bed to arrange for someone to stay with Lily (thanks again, Anne... second time she came over in the middle of the night in the last few weeks!!) I gave consent for a spinal tap and other emergency measures on my 9-day-old son. We drove to the hospital expecting the worst. Noah was transferred to Georgetown's NICU for treatment.

As a side note - when he arrived at Georgetown, this is what it looked like. Noah was in the box on the upper right-hand side. The Georgetown staff has joked with us that this is the photo we should show him the first time he asks for a car...

Without going into a lot of detail, it turns out that all of this was likely due to an issue with Noah's medication... not any infection. (This was just an added bonus to the severe meconium aspiration that his little body was dealing with.) We had a meeting with the neonatal staff at Georgetown this afternoon. After discussing the past two days with them, they ended the meeting by telling us we can take him home!

We're crossing our fingers that he's at home this time tomorrow, and Lily is very excited to "hold baby Noah."

Our Sat Chat

For those of you without experience with respiratory issues in the NICU (which, I hope, is the vast majority of our blog readers) - feeding is not as simple as it may seem. When Nancy nurses Noah, I keep an eye on his oxygen saturation monitor - which for Noah is normally in the 80s and low 90s (but ideally will be in the 98-100 range before he comes home).

Thus - I have to bring a little levity to the situation... so I have assigned significant historic moments (by year) to various sat levels, which I report to Nancy as she nurses. It either makes her laugh or groan - but it takes the tension out of some potentially worrisome moments.

For example:
A saturation rate of 86 - I would say "Year of the Cards' last NCAA men's basketball championship"

88 - Danny and the miracles (if you don't know what this means, don't tell Nancy!)

91 - the birth of grunge (we enjoyed an amazing Pearl Jam concert the Sunday before Noah's birth)

92 - the year I graduated from high school (Nancy, perhaps due to sleep deprivation, forgot my grad year and panicked that Noah's sat rate had fallen to the 70s.)

Despite the fact that Noah is still in the NICU, he is getting an early lesson in Dad's unique (Nancy would say annoying) sense of humor.

Two steps forward, one step back

I swear, if I hear one more pediatrician uses the phrase "tincture of time" - I will scream. This is medical-ese for where we're at with little Noah... it's simply a waiting game at this point. The good news is that he is stable, he is finished with his course of antibiotics and therefore no longer needs any IVs. The not-so-fun part is that we are just waiting for his lungs to strengthen up from the effects of the meconium aspiration - and there's no real timeline for when this may happen. Patience has never been my strong suit, and J. and I hope it's not too much longer until we can bring him home.

Some recent photos:

Thinking back over the course of this week - I have no idea what day this was, but it was the first day I could nurse him. He finished eating, stuck his fingers in his mouth, opened his eyes and looked up at me as if to say, "Where have you been, mom?"
On Tuesday, the nurses put him in clothes for the first time! At first, he was not too thrilled...
Snuggling with Daddy on Wednesday... and IV free!
Today was a frustrating day... we thought we might get to bring him home on Saturday, but he had a little setback overnight. He was back on the canula this morning, and now the latest estimate for discharge is Monday at the earliest.
He purses his little lips just like Lily did when she was teeny.